Just a spy ship or AGI

The basic model here is simply a resin 1/1200th-scale cargo ship, bought for a few pence a while back at a show. I didn’t really have much need for it, and it sat there for ages, until I happened to pick up an old issue of War Machine that dealt with the subject of intelligence gathering ships in the 1980s and before. It crossed my mind that this little vessel might make a decent Warsaw Pact (let’s not be too specific) AGI (Auxiliary, General Intelligence). So I cleaned up the hull and the decks, added two hefty masts, a host of sinister black aerials and some ship’s boats. There’s a pillar at the front, on the foc’sle next to the hatch, which I thought would represent a Soviet twin 30mm.

Painted light grey with corticene decks — that’s it.

Bears some resemblance to the 7,000-ton ships of the Akademik Kurchatov class and the large Tropik class of former factory ships. As old Admiral Sergei Gorshkov used to say, “You’re never alone when there’s a spy ship around.”